How Hybrid Cars Work

A driver's desire for quick acceleration
causes our cars to be much less efficient than they could be. You may
have noticed that a car with a less powerful engine gets better gas
mileage than an identical car with a more powerful engine. Just look at
the window stickers on new cars at a dealership for a city and highway
mpg comparison.

The amazing thing is that
most of what we require a car to do uses only a small percentage of its
horsepower.
When you are driving along the freeway at 60 mph (96.6 kph), your car
engine has to provide the power to do three things:

Overcome the aerodynamic drag caused by pushing the car
through the air

For most cars, doing
all this requires less than 20 horsepower.
So, why do you need a car with 200 horsepower? So you can "floor it,"
which is the only time you use all that power. The rest of the time, you
use considerably less power than you have available.

You can get the best mileage from a hybrid car by using the same kind of driving habits that give you better mileage in your gasoline-engine car:

Drive slower - The aerodynamic drag on the car increases dramatically the faster you drive. For example, the drag force at 70 mph (113 kph) is about double that at 50 mph (81 kph). So, keeping your speed down can increase your mileage significantly.

Maintain a constant speed - Each time you speed up the car, you use energy, some of which is wasted when you slow the car down again. By maintaining a constant speed, you will make the most efficient use of your fuel.

Avoid abrupt stops - When you stop your car, the electric motor in the hybrid acts like a generator and takes some of the energy out of the car while slowing it down. If you give the electric motor more time to slow the vehicle, it can recover more of the energy. If you stop quickly, the brakes on the car will do most of the work of slowing the car down, and that energy will be wasted. The same reasoning applies to gasoline-powered cars: Abrupt stops waste a lot of energy.

To see reviews of 2007 hybrid cars, follow the links on the next page.